By A. O. SCOTT
Published: December 21, 2007
Tim Burton makes fantasy movies.
Stephen Sondheim writes musicals. It is hard to think of two more optimistic
genres of popular art, or of two popular artists who have so systematically
subverted that optimism. Mr. Sondheim has always gravitated toward the
dissonance lurking in hummable tunes, and has threaded his song-and-dance
spectaculars with subtexts of anxiety and alienation. Mr. Burton, for
his part, dwells most naturally (if somewhat uneasily) in the realms of the
gothic and the grotesque, turning comic books and children¹s tales into
scary, nightmarish shadow plays.
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And so it should not be surprising
that ³Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,² Mr. Burton¹s film
adaptation of Mr. Sondheim¹s musical, is as dark and terrifying as any motion
picture in recent memory, not excluding the bloody installments in the ³Saw²
franchise. Indeed, ³Sweeney² is as much a horror film as a musical: It is cruel
in its effects and radical in its misanthropy, expressing a
breathtakingly, rigorously pessimistic view of human nature. It is also
something close to a masterpiece, a work of extreme ‹ I am tempted to say evil
‹ genius.
As it was originally performed
onstage, with all the songs Mr. Sondheim composed for it, ³Sweeney Todd²
balanced its inherent grisliness with a whimsical vitality. The basic
story is a revenger¹s tragedy more Jacobean than Victorian, but Mr. Sondheim
nonetheless wrings some grim, boisterous comedy out of both the impulse for
vengeance and the bustling spirit of commerce. A barber, wronged by a powerful
judge, returns to London and sets up shop, cutting throats as well as hair. The
bodies of his victims are turned into savory meat pies by Mrs. Lovett,
his energetic partner in business and crime. Cannibalism and mass murder as the
basis for a hit show ‹ what a perverse and delicious joke.
It seemed a lot less funny in the
recent revival, which starred Michael Cerveris and Patti Lupone in roles
originated on Broadway by Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury in 1979. Mr. Burton¹s
film, in spite of the participation of Sacha Baron Cohen (as a mountebank
barber in a skin-tight costume) and Timothy Spall (as a louche bailiff) pretty
much casts out frivolity altogether. Mr. Burton¹s London is a dark, smoky oil
slick of a city. Dante Ferretti¹s production design, which owes something to
the Victorian city confected for Carol Reed¹s ³Oliver!,² can make even daylight
look sinister. Innocence, represented by a pair of young would-be lovers
(Jayne Wisener and Jamie Campbell Bower) has virtually no chance in this place;
it is a joke played by fate, something to be corrupted, imprisoned or
destroyed.
Mrs. Lovett the pie maker is
played by Helena Bonham Carter, a witchy fixture of Mr. Burton¹s cinematic universe
as well as the mother of his children. If the director has an alter ego, or at
least an actor consistently able to embody his ideas on screen, it would have
to be Johnny Depp. He was the hurt, misunderstood man-child in ³Edward
Scissorhands,² the cracked visionary in ³Ed Wood² and the cold, creepy candy
mogul in ³Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,² in each case giving form to an
emotional equation that had never quite been seen on film before. As Sweeney,
his hair streaked with white and his eyes rimmed in black, he is an avatar
of rage.
Mr. Depp¹s singing voice is harsh
and thin, but amazingly forceful. He brings the unpolished urgency of rock ¹n¹
roll to an idiom accustomed to more refinement, and in doing so awakens the
violence of Mr. Sondheim¹s lyrics and melodies. Some of the crowd-pleasing
numbers, like ³The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,² have been pared away, but their
absence only contributes to the diabolical coherence of the film, which moves
with a furious momentum toward its sanguinary conclusion.
Like nearly every other
horror-film serial killer ‹ the outcast teenager abused by the cool kids; the
decent man whose suffering has been ignored or mocked ‹ Sweeney starts out as a
sympathetic figure. Once upon a time, he was a happy husband and father, until
his lovely wife (Laura Michelle Kelly) caught the eye of a malignant
judge (Alan Rickman), who transported the poor barber to Australia. Now, after
many years, he has returned to find that his daughter, now a teenager, has
become the judge¹s ward. Finding his old straight razors ‹ ³my friends² ‹ under
the floorboards of his former shop, Sweeney sets out to ensnare the judge, a
project that requires the deaths of quite a few customers along the way.
³They¹ll never be missed,² sings
the practical Mrs. Lovett. Sweeney¹s view is harsher, almost genocidal. ³They
all deserve to die,² he says, looking out over the rooftops of the city. And
Mr. Burton depicts those deaths ruthlessly. The initial geyser of blood may
seem artificially bright, but when the bodies slide head first from the chair
down a chute into the cellar, they crash and crumple with sickening literalness.
You are watching human beings turned into meat.
It may seem strange that I am
praising a work of such unremitting savagery. I confess that I¹m a little
startled myself, but it¹s been a long time since a movie gave me nightmares.
And the unsettling power of ³Sweeney Todd² comes above all from its bracing
refusal of any sentimental consolation, from Mr. Burton¹s willingness to push
the most dreadful implications of Mr. Sondheim¹s story to their blackest
conclusions.
³Sweeney Todd² is a fable about a
world from which the possibility of justice has vanished, replaced on one hand
by vain and arbitrary power, on the other by a righteous fury that quickly
spirals into madness. There may be a suggestion of hopefulness near the end,
but you don¹t see hope on the screen. What you see is as dark as the grave.
What you hear ‹ some of the finest stage music of the past 40 years ‹ is
equally infernal, except that you might just as well call it heavenly.
Questions
Essay Question. Does this review make you want to see this film?
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